Updated Results are online.

Feeling Lucky?

Well, Saturday was perhaps the prettiest day sailing one can imagine. Clear blue skies, unseasonably mild. Smooth still water. Not a breath of wind.

Wait a minute? What was that last one again? The winds were even lighter than the 5-10kts forecast. We had just enough breeze to allow some of the earlier fleets to ghost through the start line, head toward Harding, and then get caught in a drift-a-thon. As near as we can tell, NOBODY made the next mark (Ft Mason or Blossom, chosen with great optimism). Heck, nobody made any mark. At least four boats hit the Committee Boat (and let's give a huge thanks to Doug and Andrea Owen for putting Anakalia in the line of fire). The ripping ebb made life quite a challenge. We pulled the old cat out of the bag (by which we mean the "Cat in the Hat" AP pennant), fired two guns, and signalled a postponement as two more racers went bumpety-bump against our unforgiving Danforth on the bow.

And that was all she wrote. The wind never came back, other than a few wisps to tease us without mercy. We waited. A radio query to the driftamatic fleet as to whether they'd welcome a restart was met with a solid no. Some boats drifted through the South Tower of the GGB and met some serious issues. Folks, there are rocks in there.

All credit is due to the perseverance of those who stayed out there. We kept the committee on station to take finishes till the bitter end, then fired a gun to indicate that we now had a 158-way tie for first place and opened up the bar. Well, actually, the bar was open all day, and we were impressed by the great spirit everybody had! After a relaxing time on the deck, we opened the Ballroom, served over 250 dinners, and partied late into the night.

And Then Came Sunday!

The morning of the big day dawned bright and clear. As the rosy fingers of the dawn crept through my window, I could scarcely contain myself. "Huzzah!" I shouted, "Huzzah!"

Another day. A chance for redemption. A chance to put into place all the helpful and mostly conflicting advice we had received over the course of the night.

The forecast was marginally more encouraging. A cold front off to the north might stir things up if it did not dump a cold shower on us. The current, on the other hand, was to be a miserable 5 knots. If 3 knots on Saturday was bad, 5 knots could be worse. How so, you ask? Okay, the 5 NOTs:

• NOT a good thing for light winds
• NOT any way to avoid it
• NOT a safe way to move your boat
• NOT a chance of slow boats finishing
• NOT a lot of fun

What to Do?

We knew that sending boats toward the Golden Gate bridge in an ebb and light wind, unless starting the Pacific Cup, was a bad thing. So, our friends on TNT hollered out a suggestion. "GO EAST." Now, they may have been cheering for a team in the Shriners game, but we looked at our situation and decided to give it a try. First, of course, the AP had to fly till we got some breeze. We only had a fifteen minute wait, and off we went, as the wind picked up to a good stiff Northerly. Yahooo!

You guys were great. A port-tack reaching start is ordinarily a recipe for trouble, especially in a crowded midwinter fleet. But you folks handled it like real pros! The port-tackers set up at the pin to windward, and the starboard tackers cut in under the committee boat (and the two barrier boats trailing her stern) to leeward. No shouting, no hassles, nobody called over early. Oh, one J105 got a little too excited and started 5 minutes early, but she came back. Nice set of starts, perhaps realizing that we might only get one chance.

The hard part was at Raccoon Strait. We had to sail upwind through the firehose, playing the edges for current relief, but too near the shore and you lose your wind or even get stuck in the mud. As the Miwok used to say "Even a chief may get stuck in the mud."

Those showing plenty of respect for the current made it around all of their marks. There were a few cases of mark touching, and one unfortunate pile-up at the Y marker, but only a handful of boats failed to complete the course out of 130 starters. And who had fun?

The debut of our All-Catalina fleet was rather remarkable, with barely one minute separating the first six finishers, Ka~Nina leading. Sorcery blew our socks off with a graceful start and a great finish, placing nicely against the PHRF 1 fleet in her SF Bay debut. HOWL, TNT, Mr Magoo and Sea Saw picked up podium finishes in their very competitive spinnaker fleets. Gary Fanger added to his trophy case, and Keith Brown on Aleta did a great job against the IOR warhorses. Perseverance took line honors in her class, a nice thing to see for this perennial entrant, with Basic Instinct and Q on her heels.

In the Express 37 fleet, Kame Richards' Golden Moon started 5 minutes late and still beat her fleet by a nice margin. Unfortunately, she retired after finishing, as she had been using her motor unaware of the start sequence. A sportsmanship cup was awarded while Phat Jack walked away with the real goods. John Notman's Knots² won the J/109 class and.... OH GOSH! I just got the joke! Knots², is "Square Knots," right? John NOTman? How long has that been staring us in the face? Are there other funny boat names out there? Probably not.

Serendipity and Yucca got firsts, and AQUAVIT, briefly overlooked by the committee, finished first, as Lulu and others in the fleet were gracious to point out. The resurgent SF Bay 30 fleet got its own start, with SHAMELESS and JANE DOE taking first and second, separated by only 29 seconds.

WHITE JACKET, John Sutack's Etchells, turned out after scoring corrections to win the PHRF 4 division. More first places went to LIZBETH, ROXANNE, 306LP, CAN O' WHOOPASS, and Endless Summer, chairing the Catamaran Division.

Correcting

There were a few scoring errors. Surprise duplicate sail numbers and human error led to a few revisions. How on earth we could miss half the catamaran fleet is beyond us! We believe the currently posted results to be correct. You can take a look at finish-line photos with rough times at the site hosted by our race director Donal Botkin. If you find an error that affects results, please let us know. Scoring corrections will be handled in inverse order of surliness of request.

Okay that's it for now. Saturday Pictures from Leslie Richter at rockskipper.com. Finish pictures courtesy of Donal Botkin. Harbor picture from Lisa Marie Jarrel Wear!

Want to enter? Visit the Midwin Website and sign up. $35 for the second half only!